Land, language and Lieberman

On Israel’s identity crisis.

My cover story from last week's issue -- No loyalty, no citizenship -- is now available online. It looks at politics, religion and identity in Israel using as a peg a proposed amendment to the country's Citizenship Act which would see newcomers required to swear allegiance to "a Jewish and democratic state".

The man behind the proposal is Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party (translation = "Israel is our home"). The amendment has been described variously as "a declaration of purpose", "stupid and needless" and "racist". Opponents fear it will entrench the inequalities already felt by the Arab minority in Israel. Proponents say it merely echoes Israel's declaration of independence in 1948.

Here's a taste of some of the voices featured in the piece:

It's a stupid thing to ask Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state before the Palestinians have their own state or at least know where the borders are going to be." -- Sufian Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian minister and senior Fatah official

"Politically, I'm very much on the left, and it's a strange thing to be saying, but I appreciate that Netanyahu has an understanding that the Arab world in some way . . . hasn't internalised the concept of Jewish statehood. It may have done it from a political point of view, but it hasn't done in terms of legitimacy." -- Jeremy Leigh, lecturer in Israeli studies at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem

"Define Jews as a nation and you have a tautology, whereby Israel is the national expression of a nation - explaining and defining nothing." -- Naomi Chazan, a former deputy speaker of the Knesset and now president of the New Israel Fund, a US-based advocacy group

"Maintaining a democratic country with a minority which identifies with a nation that is at war with that country is bound to have problems." -- young, media professional in Tel Aviv.

"Israel did everything it could to make us forget our history: controlling education and the media, putting us in a ghetto, preventing us from having normal relations with the Arab world." -- Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset

After land, language is perhaps the most fought-over and contentious issue in the Middle East. So the use of the terms such as "ultra orthodox", "Zionist" and "Arab Israeli" come with baggage. In the Correspondence page of this week's issue the piece has been criticised for legitimising Palestinians and sanitising Israel. You can make your own mind up by reading it here.

About the picture

The photo on the top of this post is taken from a series by photojournalist Silvia Boarini, which is currently on display at Amnesty International's Human Right's Action Centre in east London. The images document life in al-Araqiba, an "unrecognised" Bedouin village near Negev where the population lives in fear of home demolition. The first mass demolition occurred in July 2010 when 30 homes were destroyed.